Sputnik
Elements of Ukraine’s deep state have come out of the woodwork to warn about the unpleasant potential consequences for the regime of Trump’s victory in Tuesday’s presidential election.
Former president and oligarch Petro Poroshenko, implicated in the alleged pay-to-play corruption scandal involving President Biden’s son, and boasting about how the 2015 Donbass peace Minsk Agreements inked during his tenure were an anti-Russian ruse, led the charge among officials putting a brave face on things.
“I insist on red lines, which exist not only in Ukraine, but the entire free world,” Poroshenko wrote in a late-night social media post Wednesday, outlining five demands he said the Ukrainian government must stick to under Trump, including “no compromises” on sovereignty, territorial concessions, restrictions on the size of Ukraine’s armed forces, sanctions, or NATO membership (basically a complete repudiation of the Russia-Ukraine draft peace deal negotiated in Istanbul before being sabotagedby NATO in the spring of 2022).
Poroshenko’s gung ho posturing stands in sharp contrast with what Ukrainian officials are saying privately.
“At this stage we are talking about survival, not victory,” an unnamed former senior member of the Zelensky cabinet tolda UK outlet. “What is important today is not fighting forever for lost territory. It’s making sure that Russia is no longer a military threat to us. That can only be done diplomatically, not militarily,” the official said.
Another source warned Ukraine’s Strana.ua newspaper Zelensky would be basically forced to accept a Trump plan to freeze the conflict if it comes down to that.
“If Trump and the State Department approve a plan to stop the war along the front line with a moratorium on Ukraine’s entry into NATO and Putin agrees to this, the likelihood of Zelensky refusing is almost zero. The country is in no position right now to refuse its main partner, without whose support it will be almost impossible to continue the war,” the source said.
Former Zelensky foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba put it another way, telling media on Thursday that “there will be many super-irritating steps ahead from Trump which will make us reach for Corvalol [a remedy with a sedative effect] and think that this is the end, that this is all over.”
Pessimism Largely Matched in NATO
Ukrainian officials’ jittery reaction to Trump’s victory has been largely matched by Kiev’s sponsors, with Russia hawk former NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen suggesting the alliance should play to Trump’s ego and “his desire to be a winner” to push a get-tough approach in Ukraine. “I don’t think he would like to be depicted [as] a loser and if you force the Ukrainians to the negotiating table, you have a very, very weak hand when you start these negotiations,” Rasmussen said.
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